An Open Letter to the Humane Society of the United States from United Poultry Concerns

Karen Davis, President of United Poultry Concerns, emailed the following
letter today to HSUS’s Wayne Pacelle, Paul Shapiro, Nicole Paquette & Mike
Markarian. It is a response to the group’s new pig TALES video and promotion
of pig killer Joe Maxwell to the office of a Humane Society vice president:

“The Humane Society of the United States is thrilled to celebrate Food
Day with the release of this endearing and educational short film,” said
[pig producer] Joe Maxwell, vice president of outreach and engagement at The
HSUS. “We hope ‘A Pig’s Tail’ will ignite conversation about how food gets
to the table and help end inhumane practices in the pork industry.”

“The film, intended for children ages 7 to 10 and accessible to all
audiences, follows Ginger and her mother as they experience life on a
typical industrial factory farm. After Ginger is taken from her mother, she
is determined to escape. The film follows her journey, and the evolution of
a farmer who opens his eyes to a more humane and sustainable way of
farming.”

To HSUS:

People who used to wonder when I told them my concerns about your
intentions can now see the justification for themselves.

HSUS is not an animal advocacy organization or even an animal welfare
organization because animals who are being lied about and branded in the
public mind as “food” and misrepresented as “humanely-raised” for food are
not faring well at all.

You have chosen to degrade the animals you are supposed to uphold and
protect just as you have chosen to degrade the language of “compassion,”
“respect,” “protection,” and other words cheapened to fit a model of animal
abuse in the guise of animal care.

I have watched you fawn over animal abusers and distance yourselves
publicly from people who are fighting for the freedom and dignity of
animals. You have made clear that you consider our aspirations, efforts and
ideals for animals to be naïve and unsophisticated compared with your
maneuvers.

The disgustingness of HSUS includes the use Wayne Pacelle makes of the
claim that he personally is vegan as a strategy to disarm criticism of
HSUS’s pro-animal exploitation policies and programs. As has been said of
Mitt Romney seeking to trade on how “nice” he is to fellow Mormons he knows
personally while showing a brutal attitude toward people he doesn’t know
personally, fine and dandy, but what voters need to know is: what is his
Public Policy?

The Public Policy of HSUS is Animal Sacrifice.

An organization that celebrates and elevates animal exploiters,
disparages animal rights advocacy, degrades other-than-human animals,
cheapens words and misleads the public about animal production; an
organization that opposes animal rights violence to humans, while actively
promoting violence as long as that violence is directed against other forms
of sentient life; an organization that supports zoos, hunting, fishing,
animal experimentation, and butchery as long as these cruelties are not
“egregiously” conducted (egregiously is an allusion to one of Wayne’s
blogs), such an organization may be many things, but it is not an animal
protection organization.

Animal advocates need to restore the words that are being devalued by
pseudo-animal protection organizations to their true meanings. Any
organization that would hold a helpless animal to a butcher’s knife, praise
billionaires for boiling their own lobsters, and make a pig killer a vice
president may be many things, but it is not a humane organization. It is a
curse.